Gimme the Loot

For all its guerrilla graffiti backdrop, Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot is really a classic Nothing Was Ever The Same After That Summer story. His characters face tests on the limits of their goodness and their inabilities to demarcate the borders of friendship and love. After two sweltering summer days during the lives of a couple of Bronx teenagers, their lives will be changed, only not for the reasons they imagine.

Sofia (Tashiana Washington) and Malcolm (Ty Hickson) are graffiti artists, always scanning thee streets for the next perfect site to bomb. Like any graffiti kids, they want maximum visibility for maximum recognition. The problem is, every time they hit a wall, a rival outfit calling themselves the Woodside King Crew paints over it. An amped-up Malcolm and a slow-burning Sofia come up with a plan: they'll bomb the giant red apple that rises like a ponderous and unfunny joke in the outfield at Citi Field (née Shea Stadium) on those rare occasions when the Mets hit a home run. When the apple rises, they imagine, their artwork will be shown on national television and so gain them instant and far-reaching fame.

Their plan for how to do this is as well thought through as could be expected from a couple of frustrated teens. Malcolm knows a security guard out at the park who says he’ll let them in… for $500. Given that the film opens on Malcolm and Sofia stealing spray paint cans from a hardware store, this isn’t the kind of loot they’re likely to have on them. So they split up to make the money, Sofia by selling some of those cans they lifted and Malcolm by talking a fellow runner for a local drug dealer out of his stash so that he can pocket the money.

The blowback is swift and fast. Sofia gets robbed of her cash and Malcolm goes on the run from the dealer. For all their loud talk, these aren’t career criminals. Hopping through the subway turnstile is about their level of lawlessness. They’re just kids trying to make it in a landscape of cracked sidewalks, bulletproof-glass bodegas, absent parents, and few opportunities. Why are they so obsessed with bombing the big apple? They want to be noticed, to be seen as rising above it all.

Leon aims throughout for a bright but gritty feel. The easy humor, obscure R&B-flavored soundtrack, and sun-dappled colors are like a slightly warped old vinyl LP playing on a long and lazy loop. Sofia and Malcolm are on summer vacation, after all. So even though Malcolm is taking a risk by making a delivery with purloined merchandise, he still doesn’t pass up the chance to make out with rich white college girl Ginnie (Zoe Lescaze) in her small, swank Village apartment. And while Sofia is redlining on adrenaline and fury, she attracts interest from another graffiti artist who likes her style. Both Malcolm and Sofia pointedly ignore the low romantic vibe that flickers between them in each of their bickering scenes.

But the world is still the world. So Malcolm, light in his sneakers and grinning sun-like with newfound love, is reminded harshly of his station. A return visit to Ginnie’s leaves him feeling shut down like some servant by her and her cosseted friends. In a scene close to the end of the film, Sofia and Malcolm confront Ginnie on the rooftop of her building. It’s a wordless moment, but redolent. After a film that hops and skips across Manhattan with ease, the reality of money and class comes slamming home. As the teens stare at each other across a great distance, it’s clear none has the ability to cross it, no matter how magical the summer or grand the outlaw adventure might be.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.